Love Struck (6 page)

“And it seems you're taking right after him.”

“I am NOT lying. He took a soul. That's what he does.” She was taking his side over mine. Unbelievable.

“Fine,” Mom said, her nails tearing into the wood of the totem pole. “Then why don't you tell me what happened today.”

I couldn't. Not with her looking at me like that.

“Lou?” she asked.

“Last chance, Angel,” he warned me.

I folded my arms and kept my mouth shut.

No one said anything for what felt like days. Lou finally broke the silence. “I'm sorry, Angel,” he said. Then he told Mom everything. And not just what I did today with the love spell. Everything. All those mess-ups I've had with my powers since Lou entered my life. He filled her in on everything. Nothing was left out. NOTHING!

And Mom just stood there quietly taking it all in.

My insides felt like goo, but I couldn't move. I felt like a prisoner listening to all the charges being read against me in court. Lou was the prosecution. And Mom was the judge. And from the expression on her face, a pretty unforgiving one.

“Do you have anything to say?” Mom asked me when Lou finally finished.

“Not guilty?” I said with a small smile.

Mom did not find it humorous. Not at all.

“Angel Kindness Garrett!” she shouted.

This was serious. Mom was using my middle name. “What?” I asked. “It's not my fault I have powers.” I looked right at her. “Besides, didn't you say you'd love me no matter what? I guess that was a lie.”

“You know I love you. And I'm not mad that you have powers. You can't help that. I'm mad that you lied about it. And I'm mad that you went around recklessly using them.”

“I wasn't reckless,” I objected.

“You tried to cast a love spell,” Lou offered. “That's reckless.”

Why didn't he butt out of it? This was between my mom and me. “I was trying to help a friend.”

“You were playing with people's emotions,” Mom said.

“People do that all the time!” It was true. People messed around with feelings every day. I'd lost count of the number of times Courtney made Gabi or me feel like a turd. “I was just trying to help Gabi feel better!”

“That doesn't matter,” Mom said.

“Doesn't matter? People were messing with my best friend. Saying all sorts of nasty things. I had to do something.”

Mom raised her hand to stop me. “I don't want to hear the excuses, Angel. You're grounded.” She slammed the totem pole on the ground, finalizing her decision.

Lou nodded in agreement.

“That's not fair!” I screamed. I was fuming. “You don't get it. If you guys were younger, then you'd understand. Then you'd see.”

A swirl of red smoke snaked around my parents. I watched as the little lines on their foreheads and around their eyes vanished, their faces got fuller, jawlines softer, and the little patches of gray in their hair disappeared.

Lou shrunk an inch and Mom's stance changed. Their skin seemed tighter.

They were morphing before my very eyes.

Morphing into their younger selves.

My parents had become teenagers.

“Mom?” I asked cautiously, eyeing her.

“Mom?”
she elongated the word in the way you might if it were the most insulting word you could possibly call someone. Her voice was an octave higher than normal. “Are you talking to
me
?”

I should have kept my mouth shut! I knew I was angry. When was I finally going to learn that when I'm emotional, I need to be extra careful about what I say or my powers go off?

“Don't panic,” I told Mom and tried to take my own advice. “I'll make you look your age again.” I shrugged my shoulder at her. “But you look pretty awesome this way.” She really did. I had never seen pictures of young Mom. She kept her past pretty secret. But she was gorgeous. Why couldn't I have taken after her?

Mom backed up against the door. “What are you talking about?! WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
Where am I
?”

Oh wait—this wasn't right. Mom didn't just
look
like a teen. She thought she
was
one. And now she was freaking out. It was worse than I'd thought. “It's okay,” I said in my most soothing voice possible.

I definitely wasn't helping Mom relax. She was visibly shaking and her breath was short and fast. I handed her a paper bag to breathe into. But she just swatted my hand away. “I want to go home,” she said. “How did I get here?”

What was I supposed to say to that? That the devil made me do it? Teen Mom didn't even know he was real, let alone that she'd married him and had his child.

OH. MY. GOD.

The devil. I forgot about him.

If Mom thought she was her teen self, then so did Lou. And who knew what that meant? He used to be an angel. Hopefully I sent him back to that point in his life. “Lou?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. He was studying me, the room—taking everything in. He looked way too suspicious to be an angel. But his eyes kept circling back to my mother. I wasn't sure if it was because in her current state she looked like easy soul-stealing prey or because he thought she was hot. But from the way the corners of his mouth were turned up into a small smile, I guessed it was the latter.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked.

“I have some ideas.”

What did that mean?

“Well, I don't,” Mom whispered. The color was gone from her face. “I gotta get out of here.” She opened the back door, but with a wave of my hand, I pushed it shut.

Mom screamed. She tried the door again, yanking at the doorknob. I had no choice but to make sure she couldn't get out. But she wasn't giving up. She grabbed a crystal and threw it through the door's window, shattering the glass.

She was determined to leave. But I couldn't let her. With another hand motion I moved her to the other side of the kitchen.

That caused her to scream again. A long, shrieky one. But it did make her stop trying to escape. Instead, she sank to the floor and started to cry.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” I said and raced to her. “It's going to be okay. I just can't let you go. Not the way you are right now.”

But she didn't want to hear it. Not from me. She covered her head with her hands and began to rock. “Please don't hurt me, please don't hurt me,” she kept saying over and over.

“
Hurt you
? I'd never hurt you. You're my mom.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” she asked.

I looked to Lou. I was hoping he'd say something that would help the situation. Anything! But he just stood there waiting for me to answer. He wanted to hear as much as she did.

There was nothing to say, nothing that would make sense to her, so I kept silent, and her sobs got louder.

“Help me,” I said to Lou.

“Why should I?” he asked. Ugh. Teens could be so frustrating.

“For her,” I said, pointing to Mom, and prayed my hunch was right. That Lou was completely taken by her looks. “Do you want her to be like this? All afraid of powers and magic? How will you win her over then? Wouldn't it be easier to get her to like you if she just accepted it all?”

“She'd like me either way,” he said, all full of himself. “I'm pretty charming.”

Teen devil was even more annoying than the adult version. “Look at her,” I said.

“I am,” he said, his smile getting bigger.

I rolled my eyes. “I
mean
, see how upset she is?” Mom was balled up on the floor. “If you like her, don't you want her to be happy? Not some crying mess?”

Lou pursed his lips together. Then he finally spoke. “Fine,” he said. “But for her, not for you.
We're
not done.”

My parents didn't know each other as teens. They met at NYU. But it seemed no matter what age Lou was, he felt a connection with Mom.

Lou waved his hand in front of my mother and a moment later she was on her feet. “Okay . . . ,” she said impatiently, her hands on her hips. “What am I doing here?”

This time there were no tears. There was no hyperventilating, no trying to escape. There was just major attitude.

“Well,” I said, “umm, my mother asked you here to . . . to babysit me.”

“Yuck,” she whined. “I hate babysitting.”

And while she wasn't happy about the circumstances, she didn't question them. Lou did it! He made her go with the flow!

Mom crinkled her nose at me. “Aren't you a little old to have a babysitter?” she asked.

“My mom is super-overprotective.” Understatement of the year. “It's not my fault you're here.”

“My guess is that this is very much your fault,” Lou said.

Did he remember?

Suddenly, Mom seemed to notice Lou for the first time. As she looked him over, her eyes got wide. “Hi,” she said and batted her eyelashes. “I'm Maggie.” Maggie was the name she went by as a kid—before she changed it.

“Lou,” he said and flashed her a dimpled smile.

Mom cocked her head to the side and bit her lip.

No way!! They were flirting with each other!

“So what were you saying about this being her fault?” Mom asked, not taking her eyes off of him for an instant.

“Some magical beings need more supervision than others,” he said, leaving out the part that he was the devil and needed a chaperone more than anyone.

“Totally,” Mom said, like she knew what Lou was talking about.

But I guess she did. At least part of it—like powers. I
had
asked Lou to make her accept everything.

“So, Lou,” she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “A guy like you, I bet you're super-powerful.”

He just winked at her.

“Come on,” she said and swatted his arm, letting her hand linger there. “You're not going to tell me what you can do?”

“You really want to know?” he asked.

“What do you think?” she responded, her voice practically giddy.

I could not believe what I was seeing. My mom was a monster flirt. And she was hitting on the devil!

“I bet you can make Harry Potter look like a store magician compared to you,” Mom gushed on.

Wait a second. “You know who Harry Potter is?”

Mom rolled her eyes at me, and then made the “cuckoo” gesture with her hand. “Who doesn't?”

Oohhhhhhh. So I had turned my parents into
modern-day
teens. They had their old personalities complete with up-to-date useless knowledge. Too bad they couldn't remember me or their actual, adult lives.

“I can do all sorts of stuff,” Lou told her.

“Like what?” Mom asked.

“Like anything your heart desires. Just name it.”

Talk about cheese! But Mom was eating it up.

“Anything?” she asked.

“Anything,” he answered.

Mom giggled. Giggled! She should have been freaking out. She was dealing with the devil!

“Then how'd you get stuck here babysitting with me?” she asked, flipping her hair again.

“Couldn't leave you alone with her.” He pointed at me. “I wouldn't want something to happen to you. She could be dangerous.”

Me?! What about him? If Lou wasn't going to reveal his true identity to Mom, then I was going to do it for him.

“Do you realize he's the devil?” I yelled. I expected Mom to have another breakdown, to sink to the floor in a frenzied panic. But she didn't. She just twirled a strand of hair around her finger and said, “Oooh, bad boys are always more fun.”

“You
are
kidding me, right?” I demanded. “We're not talking about some guy who just skips school or stays out after his curfew. We're talking about the Prince of Darkness.”

“Even better,” she said and winked at Lou. “I've always wanted to date a prince.”

This was too much. “He's evil!”

“He's probably just misunderstood,” Mom countered and rolled her eyes at me.

I opened my mouth to object, but Lou cut me off. He was totally eating up everything Mom had to say and loving every second of it.

“Maggie, can you give us a few minutes?” he asked her. “I want to talk to this girl. See what she's up to. Make sure you're safe around her.”

Safe? From
me
? I had a lot to say to that, but I didn't. Mom nodded. Her eyes were sparkling. She was totally smitten by Lou and his knight-in-shining-armor act. “Okay, I'll go see if there's anything decent to wear in this house. I have no idea why I'm in these mommy jeans. Gross.”

Clearly, she didn't remember that this was her house. How could she just go rummaging through other people's stuff? “Uh, hello?” I said. “You can't go through the closets.”

“Why not?”

“They're not yours.”

“So?” she asked, like I was the one who said something stupid.

This was nuts. I couldn't believe I was having this conversation with her. Not that I got to finish it. Mom ran out of the room, sneaking a look back at Lou, before I could say anything else.

“So let me guess,” Lou said the moment she was out of earshot. “You're just another angel trying to get me to reclaim my wings and come home? I already told the last guy and now I'm telling you. I'm done. I'm sick of being an angel. I'm never going back. It's time for me to shine.”

This was bad. Way bad. Lou was back at the point in his life where he decided to go out on his own. Where he decided to become the devil.